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Lawyer, 1976 Libertarian Presidential candidate
Roger MacBride

Roger Lea MacBride (6 August 1929 – 5 March 1995) was an American lawyer, political figure, writer and television producer. He was the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party in the 1976 election. MacBride became the first presidential elector in U.S. history to cast a vote for a woman when, in the presidential election of 1972, he voted for the Libertarian Party candidates John Hospers for president and Theodora "Tonie" Nathan for vice president.

Reference

MacBride, Roger Lea (1929-1995), by David Boaz, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 15 Aug 2008
Biographical essay
Roger Lea MacBride was an author and the 1976 U.S. Libertarian Party presidential nominee. Roger MacBride was involved in classical liberal scholarship and activism virtually his entire life. As a child, he became close to Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and he absorbed her libertarian philosophy. He graduated from Harvard Law School, practiced law in Vermont, served in the legislature, ran for governor, and published two books on constitutional law, The American Electoral College and Treaties versus the Constitution.
Related Topic: Libertarian Party

Born

6 Aug 1929, in New Rochelle, New York

Died

5 Mar 1995, in Miami Beach, Florida

Web Pages

Libertarian Party: Campaign 2000: Presidential Campaign
Includes introduction, look back at previous presidential campaigns and basic information and links for the nominees: Harry Browne and Art Olivier
... the Hospers-Nathan ticket ... were the first and only Libertarians to receive an electoral college vote. ... That electoral vote was cast by Roger MacBride -- a Republican elector from Virginia who went on to become the LP's presidential candidate in 1976. Like the show he produced (Little House on the Prairie), MacBride's campaign was a hit. The MacBride-Bergland ticket was on the ballot in 32 states, and garnered over 170,000 of the popular vote.

Articles

The 1977 Libertarian Party National Convention, by Tom Avery, Tom G. Palmer, Libertarian Review, Oct 1977
Recounts the main events of the convention, highlighting several of the speakers and their messages
Roger MacBride followed with a broadside at the "suppression of political ideas in America," by both the government and the national media. The 1976 LP standard bearer noted that the major parties had loaded the election law to shoot down the independent candidates. MacBride also accused the national news media of being interested solely in personalities rather than ideas. Nonetheless, he pointed out, libertarians have begun to break through to the American people with their ideas and programs, and he pledged to do everything he could to help facilitate that.
Cast a Giant Ballot, by Clifford F. Thies, The Freeman, Oct 1997
Memorial and biographical essay on Roger MacBride, discussing his influence on the early Libertarian Party as well as his involvement in the Little House saga
The late Roger MacBride is perhaps best remembered as the person who brought Little House on the Prairie to television ... [H]e was the person who, through the casting of a single vote, transformed the fledgling Libertarian Party into the most important third party in America ... That Roger MacBride cast his electoral vote other than for the candidates to which he was sworn shouldn't have been very surprising. As a young man, he wrote a scholarly little book, The American Electoral College, in which he presented his own views on our indirect method of voting for the president and vice president.
The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder, One of America’s First Libertarians, by David Boaz, Time, 9 May 2015
Focuses on Rose Wilder Lane's life and relates the influence of her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, as well as Wilder Lane's influence on Roger MacBride
Also in 1943 Lane met Roger MacBride, the 14-year-old son of her editor at Reader's Digest. MacBride was fascinated by her ideas, visited her frequently at her Connecticut home, and came to think of himself as her "adopted grandson." After he published The Electoral College, a defense of that system, he was made a Republican elector in Virginia in 1972. The joke was on the Republicans: MacBride became a "faithless elector"-faithless to Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, anyway, but faithful to the constitutional principles Rose Lane had instilled in him.
UpdThe Libertarian Legacy of Rose Wilder Lane, by Jeff Riggenbach, 14 Apr 2010
Biographical essay on both Rose Wilder Lane and Roger MacBride, transcript of "The Libertarian Tradition" podcast of 30 Mar 2010 titled "Roger MacBride and Rose Wilder Lane: A Libertarian Legacy"
I first heard of him in 1972, when the reporters in newspapers and on radio and TV informed me that a renegade Republican elector from Virginia in the Electoral College, one Roger MacBride, had voted for John Hospers for president and Tonie Nathan for vice president ... It turned out, of course, that Roger MacBride was no newcomer ... In later years, MacBride abandoned the LP and went back to the Republican Party, within which he founded a libertarian organization, the Republican Liberty Caucus ... MacBride should be remembered and paid a debt of gratitude by all libertarians who want the movement to grow and attract public attention.
Murray, the LP, and Me, by David Bergland, 25 Dec 2002
Lengthy autobiographical essay, focusing on Murray Rothbard, libertarianism and the Libertarian Party; reprinted in Walter Block's I Chose Liberty (2010)
At the LP presidential nominating convention in New York in 1975, the convention had nominated Roger MacBride as the presidential candidate ... One of the leading candidates [for VP] was John Vernon, a good-looking, articulate successful restaurateur who also happened to be gay. MacBride opposed having him on the ticket, afraid that the campaign would bog down on the gay issue. (More naiveté. Precious few were going to pay attention to the LP presidential campaign in 1976.) Many of the delegates were furious at Roger and, consequently, no decision was made that day.
Roger MacBride (obituary), Libertarian Party News, Apr 1995
In memoriam profile
MacBride was the adopted grandson of Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of 'Little House' author Laura Ingalls-Wilder. He was heir to the literary estate and authored three follow-up books in the Little House series. He also co-produced the popular 1970s television series, 'Little House on the Prairie.' A Harvard-educated lawyer, MacBride won a seat in the Vermont State Legislature as a Republican in 1962. In 1972, as a presidential elector in Virginia, he made political history by casting his electoral vote for the Libertarian Party presidential ticket of John Hospers and Tonie Nathan.
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968), by Cato Institute, Mar 2003
Part of Cato's "Three Women Who Launched a Movement", celebrating during Women's History Month the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of The Discovery of Freedom (as well as Isabel Paterson and Ayn Rand books published in the same year)
[Rose Wilder Lane's] effect on a generation of proponents of liberty was profound. Her attorney Roger Lea MacBride, who she called her "adopted grandson," was inspired by her to write a series of sequels to the "Little House" books, "The Rose Years," about Lane.
Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand: Three Women Who Inspired the Modern Libertarian Movement, by Jim Powell, The Freeman, May 1996
Triple biographical essay on the women who in 1943 published The Discovery of Freedom, The God of the Machine and The Fountainhead
On November 29, 1966, [Wilder Lane] baked several days' worth of bread and went upstairs to sleep. She never awoke. She was 79. Her close friend and literary heir, Roger MacBride, brought her ashes to Mansfield, Missouri, and had them buried next to her mother and father. MacBride had her simple gravestone engraved with some words by Thomas Paine: "An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. Neither the Channel nor the Rhine will arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer."
Total Victory: How Sweet It Is!, by Murray N. Rothbard, The Libertarian Forum, 1983
Lengthy account and commentary on the 1983 Libertarian Party presidential convention
[Roger] MacBride ... who had displayed no interest whatever in the LP since his man Bill Hunscher was defeated by Ed Clark for the nomination in 1979, was holding a social gathering ... the weekend before the convention at his summer home in Biddeford, Maine ... The best evidence is that Roger had no devious political ends in mind when the social gathering was originally called. At any rate, the Burns withdrawal came only a day or two before the MacBride party, and Roger quickly seized the opportunity to come roaring back into the LP as unifier, harmonizer, and kingmaker of the Libertarian Party.

Books Authored

Bachelor Girl, 1999
Partial contents: Back Home - A Good Start - Left Behind - On Her Own - Give Me a Chance - Bachelor Girl - A Real Celebration - If I Had a Little Money - Call Me Miss Wilder - The Big City - New Friends - This Is the Life! - When We Are Married
[Introduction by author's daughter] The book ... continues the childhood story of Rose Wilder Lane, and her mother and father, Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder. Rose treated my father much as she would have treated a grandson and told him many stories about what it was like growing up in Missouri almost a hundred years ago. Dad took those stories and spun them into a series of books based on the facts of Rose's life. Bachelor Girl is the eighth and last of those books. ... Abigail MacBride Allen
Related Topic: Rose Wilder Lane

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Roger MacBride" as of 22 Jun 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.